


Musings on the Second Time Around

by PalatablePal



Category: Black Friday - Team StarKid, The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals - Team StarKid
Genre: Dubious Morality, Fix-It of Sorts, Hive King Paul Matthews, Infected Paul Matthews, Inspired by The Magnus Archives (Podcast), My First Fanfic, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, Watch me transmogrify these fine folks into avataresque things, Webby is not good, Wiggly Linda Monroe, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:40:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27292834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PalatablePal/pseuds/PalatablePal
Summary: Hannah Foster ponders on the second time loop orchestrated by her best-friend. I, meanwhile, shove all my headcanons into a fic to let it out because this has stayed in my head for far too long. This is my first fic so be warned I guess.
Relationships: Hannah Foster & Lex Foster, Hannah Foster & Webby
Kudos: 10





	Musings on the Second Time Around

Hannah was alone at home, laying in the room she and her sister shared as she listened to the background noise of the television game show that their mom would listen to day in and day out as she sat half passed out drunk on their only couch.

Webby was whispering to her, like it always did when she was alone. It didn’t speak words, seeming to slowly weave meaning into her, sowing the information and feelings like it was turning her brain to lace.

It was always preparing her, and she could trust it. No matter how much it appeared to disturb her sister, her best friend was the reason why they were here. Alive and not vaporized by the latest attempt from beyond the veil.

The thing with bright eyes and tentacles had attacked this Christmas, or would technically attack in the future. 

It used capitalism like a limb, twisting the minds and desires of this world’s people through its slippery conduit. 

It was that delivery man and his posse who had attempted that ritual, almost successful in birthing that god if it wasn’t for the tight patchworks sewn into every tear in their world.

Webby had orchestrated that as a backup, resewing their world as that wriggling thing tried to rip into it.

So here she was again, back in time for the second go around.

The first had been the musical, poisonous in the way its spores travelled with the melody. 

That had been fully ushered in by the critic, a man who underwent an involuntary apotheosis before he almost managed to grow the harmonious fungus into fruition.

Webby had fixed that too, temporarily at least.

It was once her job to make it stick.

It had been hard last time, trying to subtly manipulate the course of events so that the meteor could not infect the man. She had been lucky to find her problem solving itself, the man remaining passive and the meteor not puncturing through the veil as it did before.

She still kept an eye on that spore, contained within the man as if it had always been there. He had teal eyes now, she saw, and Webby told her that his criticisms were only of habit now. He loved the music that his body had come to feed on, his heart beating to its rhythm and blood flowing to the sound of violins

This second time around, he would need to be dealt with if it grew once more like the rot it was. She didn’t have anything before. She was and still is a kid that has no idea how to stop something like that man. She had just watched last time, trying to find ways she could stop it all when the asteroid eventually hit.

Fortunately, it never came.

This time, she wouldn't need to rely on luck. At least not to the extent that she relied on it before. She had Lex now.

Lex was different too, a quality to her remaining the same just like the singing man. Lex looked younger, yes, but she remembered everything from the last ritual attempt. Something had affected her too, a part of their heritage that had come true for the two of them. 

The same qualities that let Hannah feel things she shouldn’t and be part of the spider’s grand tapestry let Lex ignore it all. Even the strongest of barriers were merely molasses to Lex, something that she could push or puncture through given enough time.

Lex had taken to being a weapon very enthusiastically, her affinity to slipping in and out of the veil growing every day as she worked to protect their family from the things that would go bump in the night.

Hannah would feed her information and Lex would disappear, hunting the potential sources of apotheosis rituals with a gun that did and did not exist.

Hannah would then stay home alone, or with Ethan, as they both waited for Lex to return. Ethan thought she was just going to a night shift, constantly confused by the worry that Hannah felt whenever Lex left. He just thought it was a new separation anxiety, and although he was comforting about it, it was still very annoying being patronized for what felt like a reasonable concern.

He didn’t know Lex slipped out every couple days, not for work, but to fight the things that only Webby knew the true names of. People who wiggled and squirmed like their god, cuddling in a sense that they constricted the life of the people they devoured. Other patronitic entities that seemed to follow other themes, their creatures of hollowed skin and alien light.

Lex always came back okay, sometimes holding a pistol that never seemed solid, its form appearing to fade in and out before it would eventually disappear. Sometimes she would talk about her hunting friends, soldiers for a group that Webby didn’t understand, their essence too close to the composition of the other side for it to strain out.

The last time she went out, she had hunted the familiar. A few members of the wiggling cult to a contorted tentacled creature that Webby had located. They were small fry, not the big fish they were looking for, but Lex was closing in on him. It was getting especially easy cleaning up these types, their specialty with greed and darkness quickly becoming predictable in a way only Lex seemed to understand.

The delivery man was still out of their reach, but it was clear he wasn’t going to be for long. He could travel just as Lex could through the other side, although by different means. Lex had come to know him well, said he left a trail as he fled. She called him an octopus in a human suit, obvious in the way he stuck out, in the way he stunk. No matter how he twisted to get away, she would find him.

Hannah was always a bit disturbed how passionate Lex became to the task of destroying these gateways. She could tell humans and monsters apart from a glance. She stared at Hannah sometimes, in a way that always unsettled Hannah, like Lex was looking for some vital part of her.

Hannah knew she could see the threads, or at least feel them. The things that connected to her body from a web that encased the whole town. The lines all led back to Hannah, across the rift that opened up invisibly inside Hatchetfield.

They both ignored it though, Lex couldn’t talk either, with the way she felt joy as she ripped apart impossible things. It could be argued that they were both far too impossible to be considered human.

So they took advantage of it, a killer and living web, listening to the vibrations of a territorial spider in pursuit of their prey. 

They hunted all except two people, both having already become from the last two ritual attempts.

It was the humming man, Paul Matthews, and the entitled cultist, Linda Monroe.

Both seemed to be largely ignorant of their abilities and they would be kept that way.

The conductor of the musical seemed quiet like last time, humming to a crowd of one, a girl by the name of Emma Perkins. He was extremely dangerous, sure, but he was passive for the moment, content with following the woman around, his infectious tune far too quiet to be anything but catchy.

As long as he stayed distracted enough to ignore his teal veins, Webby deemed him safe and unlikely to cause trouble.

Linda Monroe wasn’t so safe, despite her ignorance. She was greedy like the monster she became a part of and she was far more dangerous than the other wriggling things birthed by it. She was ignorant and ridiculous, but Lex seemed terrified of her and Hannah could understand why from her enormous presence that vibrated through the web.

The delivery man was merely a spark compared to the raging bonfire that once was the unborn squid’s high priestess.

Lex once described what she could see beyond, just hidden by the veil. The woman’s eyes were bright cold lights above a carpet of otherworldly tentacles, curling in on themselves in impossible ways. She was a kraken compared to the delivery man, her being focused on power instead of the slipper utility of the man. 

Lex was pretty sure she couldn’t kill that now with anything less than a small army. She said that she didn’t have that many friends yet, their numbers were too small.

Hannah would say she wondered what that meant if Webby hadn’t supplied the helpful sensation of people dissolving into the veil, on those weeks when the monsters were too quiet to hunt. Lex was probably recruiting, her alignment to something other than specifically their family and her hunger for war needing to be fed.

Hannah didn't begrudge her, she was probably the same. She withheld information too. Of people that were monstrous but made of silk and twine like her. Of the spider over the town, her best-friend who was far from benevolent. An entity that could twist time for its benefit, crafting a web slowly that had begun to ensnare the world.

Hannah could imagine them in the future, a puppet and a general trying to destroy each other to craft their respective worlds, one of spiders and silk or one of armies and war.

They would be a family until that came though, and she knew they could rely on each other.

Who’s to say they'll be the last ones standing in the end anyways. Hannah’s power only came from her perception of the world around her, her best-friend only able to twist time every now and then in a tiring loop. Lex was a powerful murderer, but her strength seemed to be mostly derived from the numbers she gathered and the gun in her hand.

The musical could break its silence, the conductor finally stepping back into the lead role, his infectious tune reaching a crescendo as his meteor becomes the final instrument, leading the world into a shared teal choreography. The priestess could complete the gate, just large enough for the beak of her god to slip through, bringing the rest of its thousand tentacles with it. The world would drown as the air itself became a luxury to the ones who could afford it.

She wondered where Ethan would fall in all of this. She’d been subtly luring him her way, a hook on a string to a man that was like an older brother. He was patronizing sometimes but he was one of the few people she cared about. She caught Lex trying to do the same, trying to goad him into the bigger picture, get him passionate enough to become soluble to the other side.

It never worked, he didn’t mesh with the supernatural in a healthy way. He just got tangled in her web and the tastes of the other side that Lex tried to waft his way only slid off of him.

At this point they’d both given up, a silent truce to just stop trying.

Hannah sat in her bed trying to feel for both of their vibrations. She could hardly ever feel Lex, usually only when she wanted to be felt, when she was solid enough. Ethan was at work though, seeming to be typing away at a cash register, stuck in the dead end jobs that were all Hatchetfield had to offer. An unseen trap by Webby, feeding herself and it to everybody else's detriment. It was a small price for what they provided, for preventing what would happen if they weren’t here, if she could actually leave for California. 

She felt the two other others, ignorant and living their relatively mundane lives. The musical’s lead laying by the woman he loved and the human shaped kraken at the mall, probably buying yet more gifts for her children at the toy store.

Hannah continued to wait, pretending to sleep as she watched endlessly from a spider eye view on the town unfortunate enough to be centered in their territory.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope the formatting doesn't suck. I just copy pasted from a google doc.


End file.
